An experimental facility to test the impacts of multiple physical stressors on physiology, ecology and genomics of marine species

美国沿海海洋生态系统和依赖于它们的经济正遭受日益变化的气候的冲击，其特征是热浪、强厄尔尼诺Niño事件、风暴、低氧事件和逐渐的海洋酸化的频率和强度不断增加。环境中的这些变化具有累积的生物效应，大量研究表明，每一种变化如何分别影响许多海洋物种。接下来需要做的是一系列实验，研究这些环境因素在相互作用时是如何起作用的。该项目将在霍普金斯海洋站建立一个新的多用户实验设施，该设施将独立控制海水温度、溶解氧浓度和酸化。这些单元将使研究人员能够将海洋物种暴露在上升流生态系统中自然存在的各种物理条件下，并改变这些条件以适应未来的预测。拟议中的设施将为蒙特利湾所有机构的博士后研究人员、研究生和本科生提供实验生物学和气候变化科学方面的培训，并为波多黎各大学的研究生提供K-12外展计划和培训计划。拟议的培训活动的一个主要组成部分是通过与加州州立大学蒙特利湾分校的教员合作，支持代表性不足的少数民族、妇女和第一代大学生广泛参与独立研究和以课程为基础的项目。据推测，多种环境压力源共同作用对海洋物种的影响大于单一压力源影响的总和。然而，这一假设并没有经常在自然经历多重压力环境影响的物种中得到检验。拟议中的设施将使蒙特利湾地区海洋机构的研究人员能够对一系列与当地生态系统和环境变化相关的底栖和远洋海洋无脊椎动物和鱼类进行下一代多压力源实验。该项目将通过在霍普金斯海洋站（https://hopkinsmarinestation.stanford.edu）建立一个新的多用户实验设施来解决这个问题，该实验设施将允许独立控制海水温度、溶解氧浓度和pH值，这些参数值经常出现在蒙特利湾和加利福尼亚洋流系统的近海水域。该设施将包括40个独立控制的189升水族箱，并基于四个完全工作的原型的成功建造和实验使用。作为这个项目的一部分，将增加36个单元。四个500升的圆形水箱，以促进小型远洋鱼类和鱿鱼的研究，以及一个小型水箱系统，旨在通过混合控制水量来允许多种物理参数的快速变化，用于远洋鱿鱼和鱼类的实验，涉及设备密集型电生理和生物力学方法，将成为该系统的组成部分。在该设施中进行的实验将通过广泛的现代工具进行分析，包括先进的基因组学，神经生理学，物种相互作用优势分析和生态系统建模。总的来说，这些设施将提供前所未有的能力，对广泛的生态和经济相关物种进行合作联合实验，并将支持一个创造性的综合研究项目，研究变化的物理参数对未来海洋生物多样性和生态系统功能的影响。

Coastal marine ecosystems in the US and the economies that depend on them are experiencing the brunt of an increasingly variable climate, characterized by increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves, strong El Niño events, storms, low-oxygen episodes and gradual ocean acidification. These changes in the environment have cumulative biological effects, and a great deal of research shows how each one separately affects many marine species. What is needed next is a set of experiments on how these environmental factors act when they act in combination with each other. This project will establish a new multi-user experimental facility at Hopkins Marine Station that will provide independent control of seawater temperature, dissolved oxygen concentration and acidification. These units will allow researchers to expose marine species to the wide range of physical conditions found naturally in upwelling ecosystems, and to alter those conditions to match future predictions. The proposed facility will enable training in experimental biology and climate change science for postdoctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students at all Monterey Bay institutions, K-12 outreach programs, and a training program for graduate students from the University of Puerto Rico. A major component of the proposed training activities is through collaboration with faculty at California State University Monterey Bay in supporting broad participation of underrepresented minorities, women and first generation college students in independent research and course-based projects. The impact of multiple environmental stressors acting together on marine species has been hypothesized to be more than the sum of the impacts of single stressors alone. Yet this hypothesis has not often been tested across a range of species that naturally experience multi-stressor environmental impacts. The proposed facility will enable researchers at marine institutions in the Monterey Bay area to conduct the next generation of multi-stressor experiments with a suite of benthic and pelagic marine invertebrates and fishes that are relevant to local ecosystems and environmental variability. This project will address this issue by establishing a new multi-user experimental facility at Hopkins Marine Station (https://hopkinsmarinestation.stanford.edu) that will allow independent control of seawater temperature, dissolved oxygen concentration and pH over a range of parameter values that regularly occur in Monterey Bay and the offshore waters of the California Current System. The facility will include 40 independently controlled 189-liter aquaria and is based on successful construction and experimental use of four fully working prototypes. Thirty-six units will be added as part of this project. Four 500-liter round tanks to facilitate the study of small pelagic fishes and squid, and a small-tank system designed to allow the rapid change of multiple physical parameters through mixing of controlled water volumes for experiments on pelagic squid and fishes that involve equipment-intensive electrophysiological and biomechanical approaches will be components of the system to be employed. Experiments conducted in this facility will be analyzed through a wide range of modern tools including advanced genomics, neurophysiology, analysis of species interaction strengths, and ecosystem modeling. Overall, these facilities will provide an unprecedented ability to conduct collaborative joint experiments on a wide range of ecologically and economically relevant species and will support a creative and comprehensive research program on the effects of changing physical parameters on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of the future oceans.